Aliphatic alcohols, such as butanol, are important industrial chemicals, useful among other things as fuel additives, as chemical feedstocks in the plastics industry, and as food-grade extractants in the food and flavor industry. For example, each year at least 10-12 billion pounds of butanol are produced by petrochemical means, and the need for this commodity chemical will likely increase.
There is a need for the development of new technologies for the production of aliphatic alcohols. Methods of chemical synthesis (typically starting from petrochemical by-products) are expensive and utilize or produce environmentally damaging agents. Efforts have been made to develop biotransformation and fermentation processes that employ microorganisms for some or all of the steps in aliphatic alcohol production. However, reported protocols are typically complicated. Moreover, such efforts often are hampered by toxicity of produced compounds toward the utilized microorganisms.